July, 1939
The week after Seppe’s fifteenth birthday, he returns home from the Livorno city docks humming ‘Bella Ciao’, Renzo’s song of hope and resistance. The tune comforts him, keeps Renzo with him when he’s back in the Major’s house.
Seppe has barely shut the front door behind him, is lifting the bolt back into place, when his father is by his side, eyes narrowed, boring into Seppe.
‘What is that you’re singing?’
Seppe knows there’s no need to answer this question, unless to quell the anger. His father’s mood, already volatile, has worsened these past weeks, brought down by Ciano’s death and the increasing possibility of war. But before he can decide, his father speaks again. ‘Where did you learn this filth?’
‘At school.’ A lie, and a stupid one. His father takes a step away and undoes his belt. Seppe tenses, looks at the belt.
‘Keep your eyes on me when I’m addressing you!’ He snaps back to attention. ‘Don’t think you’re too old to feel the leather. Now tell me again – where did you hear this?’
Seppe is mute, cannot give away Renzo. He pictures Renzo, humming as he oils the stable latch, planing down the half-door in the heat so that the horses can stick their heads over for the breeze, and he gulps. The Major notices, snaps the belt in Seppe’s face, daring him to move away.
‘You tell me now or we use the buckle.’
Could he do this without betraying Renzo? ‘The docks.’
‘The docks! To consort with that scum. You little –’
There is no escaping the beating.
And worse than that, the next week the Major enlists Fredo, son of his closest ally in the fascio, to tail Seppe, ensure he never gets back to the port. Fredo, already long bedded-in as a bully and in awe of the Major, delights in this new opportunity to humiliate Seppe at every turn.
Seppe never sees Renzo again. All he retains from this period of safety is the whittling knife.
THE RAIN POURED ON outside, the sound of a thousand buckets being emptied over and over. Seppe tasted dank centuries of moss on his tongue, oblivious to the battles being fought, the war raging as fiercely as the rain. Connie looked away, touched her fingertips to the damp base of the yew. He pushed harder on the steady knife in his pocket. Stay brave. He waited. Had he said enough?
When she spoke it was as if she’d aged a generation.
‘When I said I’m fine – the baby’s fine, too.’ She leaned towards him, spoke with more measure than he’d heard from her before.
‘There’s nobody in the entire world knows about this but you and me and that’s how it has to stay. I think Joyce may have twigged, but I’m saying nothing until she asks. Do you understand, Seppe?’
‘But your family – the baby’s father –’
‘Dead and gone. One lot’s dead, the other one’s gone. This is my problem, and I’m going to deal with it my way. That’s all there is to know.’
Her eyes on his were fierce but underneath the rain he could hear her breathing, ragged and desperate. He nodded into the space between the two.
Gloucestershire Regiment
2nd Battalion
27th June, 1944
Dear Father,
I hope this letter finds you well. It would be good to hear a word or two, know you were getting on all right back home. There isn’t a day – an hour, really – that goes by that I’m not thinking of you and our Bess and the forest. I did think I might have heard word, Father, especially now that the dipping and the shearing’s long since done. I’m right sorry if I’ve upset you so much by going against your wishes.
I’m on the continent now, not too far from apparently. You haven’t seen anything like it, our Dad. The roads are lined with sandbags and the villagers all gone, who knows where. Gives you the willies, it does, to see the ghost of a place like this and know the enemy’s lurking.
Hopefully now the Yanks are involved we’ll be able to push on and see a difference, get this job finished. Joyce tells me there are even Yanks in the forest now; is that right? Seems funny to think of them sprawling all over the place with their big trucks and their chewing gum whilst I’m stuck out here.
I’ll be honest, Father, it’s lonely out here at times. I know it’s my duty, and it’s the right thing to have done. But it’s so different from home, where everyone knew everybody and the rhythm of things stayed the same no matter what. There’s no rhythm here, no rhyme nor reason. The land smells different, the sun casts different shadows, and I feel right exposed without our oaks around. Makes it harder to stay steady when the countryside itself don’t do what you expect it to.
This isn’t how a soldier’s supposed to feel, is it? But I don’t know how a soldier’s supposed to feel. I’m a miner, and a forest boy, and I’m here because of both those things, to fight for King and Country. I just hadn’t reckoned on it getting under my skin so much.
Writing to you, putting the address on them letters; it makes me feel like I’m nearly back there with you. And that’s the thing that keeps me going, if I’m straight about it.
Please write, our Dad.
Your affectionate son,
Billy
Twenty
CONNIE SLOUCHED, SWELTERING, ON the bench outside Amos’s back door and flicked again through the Dean Forest Mercury in the vain hope she’d missed something interesting in it. Nope, not a sausage. From the apple trees at the bottom of the garden, a blackbird cheeped at her as if to say, well, what did you expect?
Loneliness and thoughts of home, never as far away as she wanted, skulked at the edges, threatening, and she shrank from them. She could write to Hetty again, but what was she going to say? ‘The trees are coming down, the new trainee lumberjills are making a right pig’s ear of things, oh, and I’m having a baby in a few weeks but none of them know about it here except that Italian I work with who’s turning out to be a real pal.’
Seppe, though. He was a proper friend these days; she felt her fidgety worries melt every morning when he smiled at her and picked up that axe. He didn’t say much but the things he did say were like being stroked; she rose and stretched and felt better for him. And he had this odd knack of listening that made you want to say something worthwhile.
He couldn’t be up to much in that camp of his on a Sunday. From what he’d said it had a church he didn’t go into, a theatre he avoided like the plague and a football pitch that gave him the willies. Connie rose from the bench.
Connie slowed down to catch her breath as she saw the fence up on the brow of the hill. She’d been so excited about the idea of company that she’d more or less galloped up the lane and now it seemed like she’d been spat out at the top of the forest, surrounded by the sort of open space she hadn’t seen since she’d got here. The trees proper changed the way you looked at things and it had been weeks since she’d seen further than a few feet.
The camp was so much bigger than she’d imagined, more like a village. From where she stood, pressed up not far from the gates, she could see straight down a big open area, full of raggedy-looking blokes playing football and too busy to have noticed her yet. Round the edges different groups of men were intent on cards. As she watched, someone threw their hands in the air in disgust and the cards went flying. Connie snorted; she’d seen her pa do that more times than she could count.
Off the square led what almost looked like a proper road with a couple of black-faced square huts side by side – were those the lavs? – and either side of the path, six or seven long thin buildings with corrugated tin roofs and little windows like bad teeth. And at the bottom of the road, just as Seppe had described, was the chapel. He’d helped make that cross, had described the palaver of clambering up there with it, while below him a dozen Eyeties recited Hail Marys and he had been unmoved, more concerned with the angle. She’d tried to ask him why he didn’t care about the religious stuff – it was one of the things the Eyeties were known for – but he’d clammed right up.
Connie concentrated ag
ain and discovered what looked like a vegetable garden just off the parade ground, and yet more buildings off to the right, beside a noticeboard that bristled with paper. It was going to be harder than she’d thought to find Seppe.
Still, nothing ventured, nothing gained. Loneliness shoved her forward to the gatehouse.
‘Can I go in and call for someone?’
The guard languidly pushed back his hat, which had been shading his face, and looked at her, his head cocked.
‘No civilians allowed in, love.’
Her heart sank. She couldn’t spend another rest day on her tod – she’d end up bawling. ‘Can I walk round the edge and see if I can spot him?’
The guard shrugged. ‘Don’t see any harm in that.’
She’d made it almost halfway round before she spotted him leaning against a fence post, his head tilted against the sun. He was carving something as usual. Connie picked up a stick from the ground and prodded him through the chink in the fence.
Seppe rose to greet her, a frown forming. ‘Connie! There is a problem?’
‘No, you goof. Just … I wondered if you could use some company.’
He beamed, an unexpected light in his face, and she beamed back, happy he was so pleased to see her. They walked together round the perimeter fence to the guard hut, Connie on the outside, Seppe on the inside. When Seppe bent down to talk to the guard he just nodded, tipped his hand back. She exhaled. No grief about fraternising with the POWs then. There was an official line on such matters, but out here nobody seemed to pay much attention to directives sent down from the cities, except Frank.
Seppe joined her the other side of the fence. ‘This way.’ He headed them away from the lane she’d walked up.
‘Do you know a shortcut?’
He glanced at her. ‘Shortcut for what? This is our rest day, no? Nobody is telling us what we must do. So I want to see what is over this way.’
More trees, seemed to be the answer to that. But what did it matter? Now that she had company, the empty space lost its teeth and began to feel like freedom. Doing anything was better than doing nothing, and Seppe wasn’t just company; he was Seppe. He was her friend, she realised, mad as it seemed.
Seppe’s stride was familiar to Connie now; she matched him step for step and that was enough to stretch away the nag of loneliness and grief that had hollowed out her footsteps towards the camp. Thoughts of Mam and Linda and Babs were never far off, but with Seppe around the edges of those thoughts softened and she could manage them. Without him, she struggled still.
‘What’s that? More POWs?’ Connie stopped outside a set of big metal gates that loomed out of the trees.
‘No – it’s where the Americans are.’
‘Huh.’ Made sense they had their own camp, given how chocka Joyce was always saying the Forest houses were these days.
They veered off the path and pushed through bracken until the whistle of the ferns turned into something else.
‘A stream!’
Seppe turned and smiled at her as if he’d put the water there himself. ‘Gianni has been talking of this water, and I wanted to know myself what it is like. Livorno, my city, it is beside the sea and I miss that sometimes. Today, I can pretend I am there again, at the port.’
‘Must be a tiny ocean if this stream brings it back to you.’
He poked her with one finger, teasing. ‘It’s the Mediterranean Sea! Do they teach you nothing in these English schools? Livorno is a famous port in history, and we have not only the sea but canals too, to rival Venezia. One day we will go and I will show you.’
‘Yeah, and how will we manage that, exactly, with you stuck in a prison camp, and me being skint and working?’ But the thought of it tickled her and she bounced along, her belly jiggling. The world seemed open now, full of possibilities, not shrunken and spiky like it so often did. Funny that it took a prisoner to make her feel like this. ‘It makes me think of donkey rides and ice creams, and paddling in the sea. And if we can’t have the donkeys or the ice cream, we can at least have the paddling.’ Connie sat down on the moss and pulled off her boots and socks. ‘I’m going in – coming?’
Seppe flashed a rare smile. ‘It will be cleaner than the water I wash in at camp.’
‘Better hose you down, then!’ She bent down and scooped up handfuls of the brook water. It wasn’t too cold at all. ‘Here you go!’ Seppe gasped as the water hit him, and she ducked and laughed, anticipating the comeback.
Before too long they were both soaked, laughing and breathless. Seppe was right, it was like being at the seaside. Not that she could remember the last time she’d been at the seaside, if she was being honest.
‘All right, all right – enough!’ Connie tiptoed across the pebbles back to the bank and lay out flat. ‘I’m worn out after that!’
The wet clothes clung to her body, her belly rising up like a blimp. But this was Seppe. She wanted to cry with relief at the perfection of spending a day being herself, no needing to prove anything or pretend not to be lugging around heartburn and needing to pee in the bushes every ten minutes.
Connie propped herself up on her elbows and gazed down into the water. Seppe splashed out and sat beside her in silence. The grass tickled the inside of their arms, soft and friendly. The water sang to itself as it gurgled past them, fluid curling over the pebbles, rounding them as they nestled beside each other.
Seppe leaned forward. ‘Look! Fish. What do you call them here? Minnows, no?’
‘Don’t ask me – never seen a fish outside the chippy.’ She leaned forward and looked where he looked. Those must be the fish, the silver licks and bends amidst the pebbles.
‘Can we catch one?’
‘We can try.’ Seppe cupped his hands, thumbs overlapping, then lowered them slowly into the water.
They waited, agonising moments passing. Connie’s nose itched and she swallowed back a sneeze.
‘There’s one!’ Steadier than a heartbeat, Seppe clapped together the heels of his hands and trapped his wriggling catch inside.
He pulled his hands out of the brook.
‘Connie – quick! Something to put him in!’
She pulled off her hat and scooped it into the water, then passed it on to Seppe. He opened his hands above it, as if passing judgement on a miracle, and the fish dropped into the hat.
‘There! Dinner!’ Seppe’s whole body was a smile. Connie peered in.
‘Won’t make much of a mouthful.’
He punched her arm, as gently as a kiss. ‘I am making a joke. Perhaps not a good one.’
She punched him back less tenderly. ‘I don’t think Tommy Handley need worry just yet. But it’s a good start.’
‘Yes, and this fish is a good start. Now we know that we can live in the woods and find our dinner.’
Connie glanced at Seppe. But she didn’t want to think beyond now, not for either of them, not today. She dug her heels in and stood up.
‘Don’t know about you, but I’m feeling like it’s high time for my actual dinner.’
The look he gave her was full of something she couldn’t quite translate. For a moment, a mad moment, she imagined them going home together. He’d have to make the grub – there was no way they’d survive on her cooking. She laughed out loud at the thought and Seppe eyed her quizzically.
‘A penny for the joke?’ She loved how he’d almost got the English saying, but not really.
With an effort she jettisoned the idea. What was happening to her, going all soft as the time for the baby got closer, daydreaming of shacking up with any old Tom Dick or Harry? She blushed, pushed him gently to cover her embarrassment.
‘Not worth a penny, mate. Don’t you worry about my nonsense. Time to go home.’
Twenty-One
August
SHE HADN’T GOT ANY rest worth its name; the baby had been doing somersaults all night long. Was that normal, or was it sending out a distress signal? Mam would have known.
Connie shut the thought firmly away a
nd picked up the pace, trying to march away that empty feeling that came when she first woke and remembered. The early mornings were light these days, the path into the woods buttery with sun. The baby was quiet now after her night-time acrobatics and Connie had a full day of hardwoods ahead. Every Monday she wondered privately if this might be the week she needed to fake an illness before anyone found out about the baby, but either the men of the forest were paying her no mind at all or she was doing a better job than it felt of arranging her clothes as best she could and carrying on regardless.
‘Off to work early, aren’t you? My Frank’s still polishing off his bacon and eggs.’
Connie looked round as Joyce strode up the path, headscarf firmly in place, an empty basket over her arm.
‘You’re not exactly dawdling yourself.’ She did like Joyce; there was a solid certainty about her and she’d taught Connie a lot when she’d given her those cooking lessons.
‘Tuesday’s the day they stock back up at the grocer’s. Need to get there and get queuing by eight if you want half a chance.’
‘I’d have thought you got everything you needed from the garden.’
Joyce winked. ‘Aye, but we use our coupons like you city folk so that the government don’t cop on to how much we’re growing and send someone down to dig our own gardens for victory.’ Joyce looked across at Connie as they kept pace up the hill towards the ridge. ‘Our Frank give you that bit of bread and cheese, did he?’
Connie dropped back a pace or two so that she faced the back of Joyce’s coat. Was this going to be the talk she thought it was? She couldn’t bear to look at Joyce if so, was suddenly small and worried. Deep breaths. ‘He did, ta very much. That was good of you, Joyce.’
‘Aye, well. Thought you might need the extra for a bit.’ Joyce didn’t make any attempt to turn round and Connie’s step missed a beat. Did Joyce mean what Connie thought she did?
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